RETURN TO EDINBURGH. 107 MAUCHLINE, 2d August 1787. SIR-For some months past I have been rambling over the country, but I am now confined with some lingering complaints, originating, as I take it, in the stomach. To divert my spirits a little in this miserable fog of ennui, I have taken a whim to give you a history of myself. My name has made some little noise in this country-you have done me the honour to interest yourself very warmly in my behalf; and I think a faithful account of what character of a man I am, and how I came by that character, may perhaps amuse you in an idle moment. I will give you an honest narrative, though I know it will be often at my own expense; for I assure you, sir, I have, like Solomon, whose character, excepting in the trifling affair of wisdom, I sometimes think I resemble—I have, I say, like him, turned my eyes to behold madness and folly, and, like him, too frequently shaken hands with their intoxicating friendship. After you have perused these pages, should you think them trifling and impertinent, I only beg leave to tell you that the poor author wrote them under some twitching qualms of conscience, arising from suspicion that he was doing what he ought not to do— a predicament he has more than once been in before. My most respectful compliments to Miss W. * Her very elegant and friendly letter I cannot answer at present, as my presence is requisite in Edinburgh, and I set out to-morrow. It was necessary that Burns should return to Edinburgh. He had to settle with his bookseller, Creech; and for some other excursions which he contemplated through the classic scenes of his native country, Edinburgh was the proper starting-point. He arrived in the city on the 7th of August.2 The only literary incident that can be attached to the little interval between Burns's arrival in Edinburgh and his departure on his Highland tour, is the composition of an elegy on the death of Sir James Hunter Blair. Sir James was an Ayrshire squire, and a member of the banking-house of Sir William Forbes and Company; a public-spirited citizen and magistrate of Edinburgh, and an amiable man. He was cut off on the 1st of July, in the prime of life, and it was with no venal feeling that Burns penned verses on the occasion. It cannot be said that they form a happy example of his powers; but they are interesting from their local allusions, and comprise one or two lines not unworthy to have proceeded from the bowers of Twickenham : 1 Miss Helen Maria Williams. 2 This date is assumed on the strength of a passage in a letter to Dr Moore, Jan. 4, 1789: He [Creech] kept me hanging on about Edinburgh from the 7th of August until the 13th of April 1788.' ON THE DEATH OF SIR JAMES HUNTER BLAIR. The lamp of day, with ill-presaging glare, Dim, cloudy, sank beneath the western wave; The inconstant blast howled through the darkening air, And hollow whistled in the rocky cave. Lone as I wandered by each cliff and dell, Once the loved haunts of Scotia's royal train; 1 Or mused where limpid streams once hallowed well,2 Or mouldering ruins mark the sacred fane.3 The increasing blast roared round the beetling rocks, The paly moon rose in the livid east, And 'mong the cliffs disclosed a stately form, Wild to my heart the filial pulses glow, 'Twas Caledonia's trophied shield I viewed: Her form majestic dropped in pensive wo, The lightning of her eye in tears imbued. Reversed that spear, redoubtable in war, Reclined that banner, erst in fields unfurled, 'My patriot son fills an untimely grave!' With accents wild and lifted arms--she cried; 'Low lies the hand that oft was stretched to save, Low lies the heart that swelled with honest pride. 'A weeping country joins a widow's tear; The helpless poor mix with the orphan's cry; The drooping arts surround their patron's bier; And grateful science heaves the heartfelt sigh! 'I saw my sons resume their ancient fire; I saw fair freedom's blossoms richly blow: But ah! how hope is born but to expire! Relentless fate has laid their guardian low. The King's Park, at Holyrood House. 2 St Anthony's Well. ELEGY ON SIR J. H. BLAIR. 'My patriot falls, but shall he lie unsung, While empty greatness saves a worthless name? 'And I will join a mother's tender cares, Through future times to make his virtue last; She said, and vanished with the sweeping blast. 109 One can imagine that, with all his interest in the death of the Ayrshire patriot, Burns did not find his muse very active of invention on this occasion. Such actually appears to have been the case. Amongst the poet's Edinburgh patrons was Mr John Ferrier, writer to the Signet, father of a lady who in a later age has distinguished herself in the walk of prose fiction. This gentleman had in 1784 built for himself a house in George Street, a few doors west of St Andrew's Church. It was the most westerly house in that part of the New Town in its day, and considered as so remote from the great centre of business, that Mr Ferrier's brother agents were generally impressed with the idea that his removing so far out of the way would be seriously injurious to his prospects in the profession.2 These local particulars lead us to the idea of Burns rambling one day along the rudimentary streets of the New Town, and finding the inspiration of which he was in search for the Blair elegy in a rencontre with Mr Ferrier's eldest daughter.3 TO MISS FERRIER, ENCLOSING THE ELEGY ON SIR J. H. BLAIR. Nae heathen name shall I prefix Frae Pindus or Parnassus; Auld Reekie dings them a' to sticks, Jove's tunefu' dochters three times three Made Homer deep their debtor; But, gi'en the body half an ee, Last day my mind was in a bog, 1 Authoress of Marriage, The Inheritance, and Destiny. 2 The house is now occupied by Messrs Paterson and Roy, musicsellers. 3 Afterwards Mrs General Graham; now for some years deceased. beats tottered stupified Do what I dought to set her free, The mournfu' sang I here enclose, And [wish and] pray in rhyme sincere, เ could The reader cannot fail to have been struck by the poet's selfaccusations in some of his recently-written letters-as where he 'tells Ainslie that he now sees he never shall be wise, and admits to Nicol that 'thoughtless follies and hairbrained whims' are continually leading him aside from 'the right line of sober discretion.' When taken ill at Mr Hood's, ' embittering remorse scares his fancy at the gloomy forebodings of death.' For follies read sins, and we have the unfortunate bard's case truly before us. A perverse passion, which was the half of his wonderful inspiration -how sad to have to acknowledge that it had still been betraying him into derogatory conduct during this year of brilliant reputation. To him the past had no effectual warning; the future was ever undreamt of till too late. Even that consideration of wrong and suffering to others, which one would have expected to be the strongest guard to a genially humane and unselfish mind like his, failed to keep him in the right path. Yet let not the reader indulge in any exaggerated suppositions; let him rather know the simple downright fact, that one young woman was now-to use a phrase of his own-under a cloud on his account in Edinburgh. In considering the situation of the great poet, enjoying the first fame, and bethinking him of the new career before him, we cannot have a full sense of what he was and felt himself to be, unless we keep in view that he must have had his private reflections on great, though secret transgressions; his remorse for their effects on others; and his terrors for their retributory evils to himself. During this very month, while preparing for a tour amongst the nobles of the land, he was assailed with a repetition of the legal proceedings which had sent him into hiding a twelvemonth before, though regarding a different person-a fact substantiated beyond doubt by a document dated the 15th of August, liberating him from the restraints of a writ of in meditatione fuga.2 This document he had himself preserved, and probably carried about with him for some time, so that it had been liable to be used as a piece 1 The original manuscript of this piece is in the possession of Miss Grace Aiken, Ayr. 2 The terms of this writ must have been merely used formally, in order to force him to a granting of the required security. of spare paper for memoranda of his own. Most characteristically, it contains, scribbled with a pencil in his own hand, a couple of verses of an old indecorously comical song, which he must have heard somewhere and wished to preserve. Such was Burns: with genius transcendent, and feelings alive to all the impulses of the noblest humanity, fatally, recklessly-yes, it must be admitted, recklessly—liable to a passion remarkable for the humiliations to which it exposes its victims. Was it an incongruous character? Where is the man that could maintain such a theory? Then, is Burns beyond forgiveness, admiration, and love? Let him who has shewn the same measure of greatness answer the question in the affirmative. 'Twere superfluous to say what the verdict of his countrymen in general will be. On returning to Edinburgh, Burns did not resume his former lodging. His friend Richmond having, in the interval, taken in another fellow-lodger, he was obliged to go elsewhere. He is supposed to have accepted a temporary accommodation in the house of his friend Nicol, who was to be his companion in the contemplated Highland tour. Dr Currie's sketch of this person is substantially just:- Mr Nicol was of Dumfriesshire, of a descent equally humble with our poet. Like him, he rose by the strength of his talents, and fell by the strength of his passions. He died in the summer of 1797 [at the age of fiftythree.] Having received the elements of classical instruction at his parish school, Mr Nicol made a very rapid and singular proficiency; and by early undertaking the office of an instructor himself, he acquired the means of entering himself at the University of Edinburgh. There he was first a student of theology, then a student of medicine, and was afterwards employed in the assistance and instruction of graduates in medicine, in those parts of their exercises in which the Latin language is employed. In this situation he was the contemporary and rival of the celebrated Dr Brown,1 whom he resembled in the particulars of his history, as well as in the leading features of his character. The [place of an under-teacher] in the High School being vacant, it was, as usual, filled up by competition; and in the face of some prejudices, and perhaps of some well-founded objections, Mr Nicol, by superior learning, carried it from all the other candidates. This office he filled at the period of which we speak. 1Author of the Brownonian system of Medicine; an extraordinary genius, now beginning to be forgotten. His therapeutics were a kind of epicurism, too apt to acquire the favour of fashion in that age; and he was scrupulous to practise himself what he dictated to others, being never without a whisky bottle on his lecture-table, from which he occasionally helped himself in the presence of his pupils. In the present sober times, it seems scarcely possible that such an eccentricity could have been even attempted. |